Turan Aktug

Turan Aktug (1768-1859) was a Turkish mamluk who served in the Mamelukes of the Imperial Guard of the First French Empire during the Napoleonic Wars.

Biography
Turan Aktug was born in Homs, Syria, Ottoman Empire in 1768 to a family of Sunni Muslim Turks, and he was enslaved at a young age. Aktug became a mamluk slave soldier, and he served in the Ottoman military before being captured by Jean-Baptiste Kleber at Acre in 1799. Aktug and several other Ottoman prisoners were pressed into the service of the French First Republic, and he later became an officer of the Mamelukes of the Imperial Guard. In 1805, his company fought well at the Battle of Austerlitz in Moravia, and he served France faithfully. He managed to survive the Second White Terror and settled in Caen, Normandy, where he married a local French woman. Aktug died at the age of 91 in 1859.